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Sunday, 14 April 2013

As in her life, so in her death:Mrs. Thatcher remains a deeply divisive
figure. I have been searching inside myself this past week for elements of
regret, or feelings of loss, or any of the sadness that is a normal part of
mourning. But search as I have, there is nothing there – just a
hard-heartedness that seems to mirror what I always thought was her defining
quality: an imperviousness to feelings of concern, an absence of empathy, a
failure to imagine the desperation of others who were affected by her actions.

Whether as a mother to her own children or a ‘mother’ to her
nation, she seemed indifferent to the pain she was causing. She was entirely
wrapped up in her own convictions: how she saw the world was right – and
everyone else was wrong. What she thought was to her, self-evidently, The Truth
– and other opinions were faulty
thinking, errors, and could be dismissed with disdain. No wonder that to live
through her years of premiership was an enraging experience for so many
millions. And the feelings that have ben released this week, since the news of
her death, seem to testify to the way in which some of those feelings linger
on,raw and alive in so many. I don’t
share Ed Miliband’s politically-calculated deference to her achievements. As his Labour colleague Glenda Jackson - maybe freed to speak her mind by her decision to step down at the next election - said in
the Commons, Thatcher was guilty of wreaking over a decade "the most heinous, social, economic and
spiritual damage upon this country”.

Whether Mrs. Thatcher was consciously intending this, or whether it
was a by-product of her conviction politics, is not the point. What matters is
that her years as Prime Minister saw the destruction not only of communities
throughout the land, particularly in the north of England and in Wales, but the
destruction of a sense that community bonds matter – “there is no such thing as
society”. That a fulfilled life is
sometimes more about service to others than what one can get for oneself
was an ethic that was overridden by the individualistic ethos she promoted in the public domain. By
appealing unashamedly to personal aspiration – always a vote-winner – rather than
collective values involving care for others, compassion and generosity (the
hallmarks of what makes life with others workable and worthwhile), the 1980s
became the decade in which greed and selfishness came to be seen as virtues.

There was a rigidity in her thinking and in her manner that
was frightening – as well as the lack of a sense of humour, which often suggests
someone whose emotional or inner life lacks vitality. In the latter years of
her premiership there were clear signs – if you had eyes trained to see these
things – of mental disturbance: her long decline into dementiacame as no surprise.

Whether hard-hearted of me or not, whether I remain too
attached to my own prejudices and beliefs or not, I cannot find it in me to
mourn her passing. I wouldn’t ‘dance on her grave’, as that rather ugly
sentiment puts it, and I would give her credit for being the first major
politician anywhere to draw public attention to the potentially devastating
effects of climate change (this was in 1988). But when I re-read the words she
declared on the steps of Downing Street in 1979, in her
carefully-tutored-for-the-cameras enunciation , words borrowed from Francis of
Assisi (though probably not his either) – “Where there is discord, may we bring
harmony...where there is despair, may we bring hope” – I can only shake my head
in disbelief, and despair, at the gap between her words and her actions, and
the consequences of her actions for so many millions of people in the UK.
Perhaps the most telling statistic is this: in 1979, one in seven children in
the UK lived in poverty; when she left office in 1990 it was one in three.

There are plenty around this week ready to hymn her
praises, so I leave that to others. From a traditional Jewish perspective there is no moral
obligation to mourn for an ‘unrepentant sinner’- that is, someone who has caused suffering and has not made material or
emotional restitution (which can involve acknowledging ‘wrongdoing’ and asking
for ‘forgiveness’). This seems to be a bit of arcane lore/law that has its own
deeper wisdom. Thatcher never seemed capable of self-reflectiveness, nor was
there ever a recognition of harm done to individuals, or to the fabric of the
nation.

So I won’t be mourning on Wednesday, I won’t be watching on
TV, I won’t be regretting her going – for many in the younger generation she
was already history (as my son emailed me, “Was Thatcher cyrogenically
frozen?! I thought she'd been dead for years. Next they'll be telling me JFK
died”).

But those 1979 words still echo: “Where there is
error, may we bring truth...”-
frightening it is when politicians pick up the rhetoric, the mind-set, of
fundamentalism.Killing off one’s enemies
– those who see the world differently - is never far behind.